The Beast is a train ridden by the desperate men and women from Mexico and Central America who hope to reach the United States. They cling to the roof of the train, hide in spaces between and underneath the cars. Those who fall are crushed. Those who survive can be robbed and raped and sometimes murdered by gangs of narcos who deal in human traffic as well as drugs.

In a compelling account filled with human misery, Oscar Martinez tells of working his way north with the migrants from El Salvador to Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico. He spent two years recording the stories of migrants, public officials, shelter workers, coyotes, even some of the narcos themselves to write this painful story. Each step of the journey north is filled with danger. The poor are escaping not just from poverty but from violence in their own countries. And they are victimized every step of the way. They are robbed and beaten. The women are raped, their underwear draped on bushes to show the conquest.

And there is nowhere they can turn. Public officials are so corrupt that it is as dangerous to complain to them as to defy the gangs. The walls and increased security on the U.S. side of the border only make things worse, writes Martinez, a Latin American journalist. Gangs control the coyotes who lead the migrants north. They demand names of relatives in the U.S. who will pay ransoms. They charge thousands of dollars to lead the migrants across the border.

“The Beast” is a shameful account of human depravity.

Under the Eagle

Samuel Holiday (Univ. of Oklahoma)

Samuel Holiday was one of the famed World War II code talkers. He was part of a group of 420 Navajos who were secretly trained to use their own language and 600 code words and terms to communicate among various Marine units fighting the Japanese. “Under the Eagle” is the first oral history of a code talker.

Ironically, the white man’s school refused to let Samuel Holiday speak his native language, in an attempt to wipe out Indian ways. But it was that forbidden language that saved lives.

Holiday tells how his Navajo beliefs prepared him mentally and physically for his ordeal, which was harder than that of other Marines. More than once, he was mistaken for a Japanese soldier and mistreated by his fellow Marines.

“Under the Eagle” is as much about the Navajo religion and beliefs as it is about combat. Holiday explains how boyhood rituals such as rolling naked in the snow to build endurance and participating in sacred rituals prepared him for combat. He credits ceremonies performed by medicine men for keeping him safe.

Robert S. McPherson, Utah State University history professor, provides supplemental historical and cultural commentary that builds a framework for Holiday’s story.

John Root and Hiram Marks were the first white men to settle in the area. Members of a wagon train, they were taken hostage by Utes angry that a white man had raped an Indian woman. When offered their freedom years later, the two remained with the Utes, then became mountain men.

Frank and Sam Doll were among the most successful of the settlers, once employing 82workers in their various operations, which included ranching and flour milling. Despite fire and a murder, they ran a highly successful operation until a dispute over a piano turned the two against each other. Equally determined was Frank’s wife, Lucy. When the ranch hired two black grooms, the other cowboys refused to eat with them. Lucy told them they could change their minds or go hungry.

Not many of the Eagle County characters got rich. Doc Joseph Gilpin delivered babies and treated pneumonia, never charging more than a few dollars, then lowering the fee if it was too much. When a cub reporter criticized the doctor for lax duty after a train wreck, the newspaper editor himself published an apology.

Women are among the characters, too. Sarah Doherty succumbed to her brother-in-law’s rapturous account of his ranch in Eagle County and endured a harrowing stage ride to Dotsero. She arrived at last, only to discover a sage- and rock-strewn land and no thriving farm. She asked the stage driver to pick her up on his way back, but when he stopped for her, she said she’d decided to stay. Sarah started her own cattle ranch and later was a surrogate mother to her sister’s daughters, all of whom became teachers.